


necessary sacrifice

by hydrospanners



Series: renegade [4]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Blood and Violence, Gen, Nirea Velaran, pre-SWTOR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 01:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19780684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: take care of your brother, turhaya. you're all he's got.it's the last thing her father ever said to her, the responsibility that's defined her life. now, still grieving her lost family and haunted by a war she never wanted to be a part of, jedi padawan nirea velaran finds herself torn between the person she is and the person duty demands she become.





	necessary sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> recommended track: [slow march by k.flay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LY_F8EHWgQ)

> _Kas tulisha abia al port._  
>  Chaos opens the door to opportunity.

_This is war_.

Krelv’an isn’t saying it, but Rea can hear it just the same. She can see it in the rigid line of his back and the lift of his chin, the way his eyes flicker to hers, knowing and sharp. Warning her.

_This is war, Padawan. People will die._

The people don’t usually have faces. They don’t have husbands who honor guests with fresh-baked bread they can’t afford or eight-year-old daughters who like to tattoo their fathers’ arms with rainbow flowers.

The people have always been numbers. Blue dots on a holomap, necessary sacrifices for the greater good.

_This is war_ , Krelv’an always tells her. _We must stay focused on the bigger picture._

Rea looks into the eyes of a necessary sacrifice, brown and bloodshot and crinkled with lines too deep for a man so young. A man who will pay with his life, with the lives of everyone he knows and loves, for a war they’ve already lost.

He reminds her of her father. Of Eriadu. Of a thousand other necessary sacrifices for a greater good she still hasn’t seen.

It doesn’t feel worth it. No matter what she told herself, what lie she let herself believe—There were always people behind those numbers. There were always husbands and daughters and fathers and lovers. Every blue dot she’s ever stood by and watched blink out had a life, a family, a future. It was just easier to pretend they didn’t. Easier to go to sleep at night, one step closer to Tython, to _Rhese_ , and tell herself the sacrifice was worth it.

Staring the reality of what they’ve been doing in the face, Rea can’t help feeling dirty. Can’t help feeling _wrong_. But the ice she’s on with Krelv’an is so fucking thin already. She’s close enough to her trials to taste them and if she pisses him off now—if she blows this _last_ last chance he’s giving her—that ice is gonna shatter and it will all have been for nothing. All the tongue biting and fist clenching and staying in her starsdamned place, even when she shouldn’t, even when it was wrong. Every time she’s looked the other way when she should’ve dug in and fought will have meant fucking _nothing_.

Rea isn’t sure having meaning will make any of it better. It sure as shit won’t make it right. But Rhese was always the one who cared about that kind of thing. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Dark and light.

There’s only one thing Rea’s ever cared about.

_Take care of your brother, Turhaya. You’re all he’s got._

Rea runs her hands over the braid Ranna taught her to weave and tries to feel half as strong as her aunt always was. She looks the foreman in the eyes—brown and tired and so much like her father’s, like Ranna’s and like Rhese’s—and promises herself this is the last time. She’ll fall in line this one last time, be a good Jedi and do as she’s told and then—Then she’ll be a knight and she’ll have found Rhese and she’ll never have to do this again.

This is the _last_ time.

“I’m sorry,” Rea says, forcing herself to look the foreman in the face. Forcing herself to feel the way his disappointment settles like a weight in the pit of her stomach, to feel the ache of his despair. Sympathy is the least she owes him.

He nods, understanding. He wasn’t really expecting any different, but he had dared to hope. They were Jedi, weren’t they? Jedi helped people didn’t they? He swallows, turning his hat in his hands as he gathers his courage for one last plea. “There’s really nothing you can do?”

She wants to promise the Republic will send someone. That someone in the forceforsaken bureaucracy will find it in themselves to give one single fuck about something outside themselves and look into this thing. She wants to think that if nothing else, they’ll move to protect the fuel these people have been tirelessly refining for decades.

But she knows better. They both do.

There’s no help but her and she—She—

_Take care of your brother, Turhaya. You’re all he’s got._

“There is nothing we can do,” Krelv’an says.

Rea bites her tongue until it bleeds.

* * *

They’re in the hangar when everything changes. One little glint of silver, just a flash of metal tucked away beneath the station manager’s fancy cape, and all her carefully constructed excuses come crashing down.

He was always a rat. Rea knew it the second she saw him, with his soft hands and his softer hair. With that cape that probably cost enough to feed a real fringer family for a month. He couldn’t have been more obviously cooking the books if he tried.

But Krelv’an said to let it go. Krel’van said he was just a puppet and they were hunting the hand that pulled his strings. _Remember the bigger picture_ , he said. And she was going to. This one last time, for Rhese, she was going to keep her eyes on the prize.

But Rea knows what that glint of silver under that fancy fucking cape is, and no one with a lightsaber is just a puppet.

She doesn’t even realize she’s started to move until Krelv’an’s hand is seizing her wrist, yanking her back. Until his voice is in her ear, hard and unfeeling as durasteel, whispering, “Let him go, Padawan.”

“He’s got a _lightsaber_ ,” she hisses, knowing full well that he saw what she did. That he already knows. That he probably knew the moment he met the man.

“Sith or not,” Krelv’an says, like there’s any question, “he’s already given us everything we’re likely to learn from him. We cannot let ourselves be distracted by a lead that’s going nowhere. We have to follow the trail that will take us to his masters and he isn’t it. He is a _distraction_.”

Rea’s hand curls into a fist, every muscle in her body taut and humming, begging to run, to _chase._ “He’ll kill these people Krelv’an.” She doesn’t know much about Sith, but she’s pretty fucking sure they don’t like leaving behind witnesses to their sabotage.

Her master’s expression hardens, cold like the ice she can feel starting to crack beneath her feet. “This is war, Nirea. People will die. You must learn to accept that reality.”

_War_. It’s always war with him. When is _he_ going to accept reality? When is _he_ going to accept that the war is over. It’s been over for a year and _they lost_ and she doesn’t know much longer she can keep pretending—

_Take care of your brother, Turhaya._ Rea hears her father’s voice in the back of her mind. It’s all she has left of him now. His voice, these words.

Her job.

_Take care of your brother, Turhaya. You’re all he has._

Rhese is on Tython, alone with people like Krelv’an and Marefka. Rhese with his tender, too-trusting heart. Rhese with his stories and his cleverness and his wide-eyed curiosity. Rhese who spent his whole life knowing if he couldn’t count on anything else, he could always count on her.

Ranna always told them to count on each other, told them the only thing they could trust in life was family. Is that what Rhese tells himself every night he goes to sleep alone, half a galaxy away from her? Is that what he hears in his head with every sunrise she misses? With every shuttle that lands on Tython that she isn’t on? Is his trust falling away, bit by bit, with every day that she isn’t there?

She has to get to him. She has to be his shield against these people and the ideas they’ll put in his head. The person they’ll turn him into. And the only way to Rhese is through Tython and the only way to Tython is to finally prove she’s ready for her trials.

She _has_ to show Krelv’an she’s ready.

But the foreman is watching her. There’s a Sith loose on this station and the foreman is watching _her_. Hat in his hands, the terrible weight of knowing on his shoulders. She can see on his face that he heard their conversation, that he knows about the station manager and he knows as well as she does what that means. What comes next for him. For his husband and his daughter and everyone he knows and holds dear.

Krelv’an’s hand is tight around her wrist. “Some sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.”

Rea closes her eyes and tries to force herself to agree. Just this once, just this one last time—

All she can hear is her father. Her father and Ranna, with the same brown eyes and the same brown hair and the same words, over and over for as long as she can remember. _Take care of your brother Turhaya—the only thing you can trust Turhaya—you’re all he has Turhaya—family is all we have Turhaya—take care of your brother Turhaya—_ Rea closes her eyes, trying so hard not to see those flowers etched into the foreman’s skin. Trying to think of Rhese. Of her father and Ranna and her job. Her purpose. _Turhaya Turhaya Turhaya. Take care of your brother, Turhaya_.

But the foreman is watching her. His voice is echoing in the back of her mind louder than the rest, louder even than the frantic beat of her heart. _“There’s really nothing you can do?”_

Rea opens her eyes, knowing that there is something she can do. Knowing that no one with a lightsaber is a puppet and she can’t dance on Krelv’an’s strings anymore. She can’t bite her tongue while people die for a lost cause. No matter how much she wants it, she doesn’t have Ranna’s spine and she doesn’t have her master’s knack for this kind of brutal calculus. Even knowing what it will cost her—Tython and Knighthood and _Rhese_ —Rea can’t harden her heart against these people’s suffering. She can’t look away from the rainbow flowers drawn on the foreman’s arms and she can’t stop hearing the swish of the Sith’s cape as he walks away, careless and free.

Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s a weakness, but she can only deal with the here and the now. And what’s here and what’s now is a Sith one move away from murdering two hundred hard-working fringers for his own convenience.

_Fuck that_ , she thinks. _And fuck the bigger fucking picture_.

Rea tears her wrist from her master’s grip.

* * *

The Sith runs, and without giving it a second thought, Rea chases.

An alarm sounds in the back of her mind, something primal and deep that knows when she’s running directly into waters that might be too deep. Something that sounds a lot like Ranna. _The event horizon is always closer than you think, Turhaya. Don’t go places your hyperdrive can’t bring you home from._

Rea keeps running, event horizons and hyperdrives be damned. She can catch him. She’s younger and faster and more agile; he can’t outrun her and it’s not like there’s many places to hide. But right when she almost has him, he turns abruptly, blowing open the refinery’s blast doors and diving headlong into the tangle of unfamiliar pipes and tanks and machinery.

It would have been clever if she was anyone else. If she hadn’t been born on Eriadu and raised on Corellia. If she didn’t have the sweat and smoke and steel of industry fused into her bones.

Rea leaps into the pipes, giving chase from overhead as the Sith twists and turns through a maze he’s obviously only ever seen in plans. He’s more lost here than she could ever be, and it isn’t long before he turns into a dead end.

_Gotcha_.

Rea’s nearly grinning as she drops down behind him, lightsaber already blazing. Her veins are hot with adrenaline, with the thrill of the chase and the sweet rush of victory. She _has_ him. Backed into a corner, pinned by fifty meters of pressurized tank on one side and exterior wall on the other two. There’s no way out but through her.

No way out but—but— _Shit_. Her brain starts to catch up with her feet just as two scarlet blades crackle to life in the Sith’s hands. He turns to face her, grinning, and Rea feels her own expression fall. That event horizon Ranna always warned her about really was closer than she thought, and Rea ran right past it. Like some kind of skragging idiot, she ran right into a trap.

Will Krelv’an even look for her? Will she last long enough for him to find her if he does? Alone in a maze of a refinery where no one knows to search, face-to-face with a fully-trained Sith twice her age with twice the number of lightsabers?

Her odds aren’t great.

If she runs now, she could probably get away. She’s younger, faster, more agile. If she runs _right fucking now_ —but her blood is thundering in her veins and Deerin’s voice is whispering in her ear. _The only way is forward, kid. You stop moving forward, you die_.

“Your Master should have kept you on your leash,” the Sith says, stalking toward her. Savoring his moment, savoring the fear she knows he can sense growing in her belly.

But there’s no place for fear at the pazaak table. No place for anything but purpose.

Rea watches him, watches the shift of his hips and the fall of his feet, watches the tension in his wrists as he flourishes those sabers. She wasn’t counting on two of them—she’s never seen it done outside the vids—but she’ll figure it out. She has to. There’s no way out of this but through it.

“So much for the wisdom of the Jedi. How long does your Master think you’ll keep me distracted? A little thing like you, so innocent and green. Does he not realize what I am? I’m almost insul—“

Rea throws her saber.

It arcs high, spinning end over end in exactly the way Qaric always warned her against. The Sith knocks it away with little more than a gesture, sending it skittering across the floor behind her, but it buys the opening she needs. Rea lunges, diving low and sweeping his ankle before he can follow through with a counter. When he starts to go down, Rea lets herself fall with him, twisting to grab his ankle with her hand, lifting it up high as she drives her other elbow into his knee.

If her training has taught her anything, it’s that nobody ever expects a Jedi to go for a brawl.

They hit the ground together. The Sith’s head bounces off the edge of a control panel on the way, leaving a trail of bright red blood smeared across the durasteel as he slides to the floor, dazed.

_Kas tulisha abia al port_. Ranna would tell her to run. That luck is like lightning and never strikes the same place twice. That when this door closes there won’t be another opening and she’s a half-trained, half-assed Jedi Padawan picking fights way outside her weight class. That she needs to use the opportunity the Force has given her to fucking _run_.

But she’s never had Ranna’s prudence. No matter how much she tries, she isn’t Ranna Velaran. She’s _Nirea_ Velaran and for Nirea, the only way is forward.

“I like it better on top,” Rea grunts, rolling onto her knees. The Sith blinks up at her with hazy, unfocused eyes, the same sickly yellow as that apprentice back on Skip Two. If he has more in common with her than sallow skin and corrupted eyes, a little light head trauma won’t keep him down for long.

Rea quickly prises one of his lightsabers from his hand, holding it tightly as she lifts his leg and slides under it to lock her thigh around his ribs. She drops his knee on her shoulder and shifts forward, her other knee pressed to his hip, pinning his leg to his chest. The Sith grunts as his muscle stretches, lifting his head to glare at her with a new sharpness to his eyes.

_Fuck_. Feeling her time running out, Rea slams her fist into the Sith’s cheek. She feels the bone crack beneath her fingers, feels her knuckles tearing at his skin. Feels the stir of something else, something dark and hungry awakened by the shock of pain. She raises her arm to strike again, but it’s already too late.

The Sith gestures. A simple flick of the wrist, careless and easy, that freezes Rea’s arm in midair. She grits her teeth and _pushes_ , straining against the durasteel grip of the Force—

It doesn’t budge.

“Fierce little thing aren’t you?” The Sith laughs a gurgling laugh, spitting blood and teeth from his mouth.

“Who’s little?” Rea asks. Then slams her forehead into his nose.

Or she tries, anyway. Something stops her short, another invisible hand holding her just centimeters from his face. She strains, strains and strains and strains, as much with her mind as her muscles, but it’s no good. As much as she can see the threads of the Force woven tight around her, she can’t see how to unravel them. She can’t see how to fight this.

“So much spirit,” the Sith goes on. “You aren’t what I expected.”

“I get that a lot,” she hisses, still struggling against the imprisoning Force.

“Yes, I’m sure you do. You can’t be very popular with your people, can you?” Twisted beneath her, the Sith tilts his head to the side, giving her a considering look. “You’d do much better with mine, I think. You have the passion. The _drive_. And I’ve been considering an apprentice. What do you say little Jedi? Are you ready to be set free?”

“I say,” Rea snarls, her lips pulled back around her teeth, thinking of her parents and Kieres, of Rhese, of Ranna and Liss and Qarric and Daeleth and Deerin and everything that was ever lost to keep her out of Sith hands. “I say go to fucking hell.”

The Sith tuts at her. “Such a shame.”

Gravity changes direction.

Rea flies backward like a doll on a string, slamming hard into the tank behind her. The walls of it strain under the impact, groaning ominously as the Force bears down on her, pinning her body to the metal. Black spots dance at the edges of her vision and it’s everything she can do to hang on to the saber clenched in her fist.

The Sith climbs slowly to his feet, his arm outstretched. It’s almost effortless the way he holds her there, paralyzing her with a simple open-handed gesture, fingers curled lazily toward his palm. Rea tries to push back, but the web of his power is strong and tightly wound. She can’t fight it head on, can’t find a weakness to exploit.

She focuses on her breaths. Panic is rising, its fingers closing tight around her throat, weighing heavily on her chest. _In and out, Padawan. Slow and steady. In and out. Feel your lungs expand. Feel them contract. Be in your body, not in your mind._ Rea lets her eyes fall shut as Marefka’s voice guides her. Inhale _—there is no emotion—_ exhale _—there is peace_. Inhale—

“That isn’t going to help,” the Sith laughs. “You weren’t made for peace, little Jedi. I can feel it. You were made for strength. For brutality.” Rea opens her eyes to find the Sith smiling at her, licking the blood from his lips. “Prove me wrong if you can. Show me the power of your master’s code.”

The Force bears down on her harder. Harder and harder, the weight of it crushing. Rea gasps for air in short, shallow breaths, her ribs aching, lungs burning. She can’t breathe, can’t move, can hardly think. Her vision swims as she strains, pushing back with everything she has, trying to resist, to move.

The tank beneath her hisses. The metal starts to warp, buckling and bending around the shape of her body as Rea is driven harder and harder against it. Tiny fissures form in the folds of the metal, searing hot steam hissing as it escapes around her.

A rib cracks, and Rea chokes on a half-formed scream. Sweat drips from her brow as she strains, body and mind, pushing and pushing against the Force, struggling for her life.

“I could show you how to fight this,” the Sith says, moving in close. “You have the power, you just have to learn how to use it. How to harness this—” he closes his eyes, breathing deeply of the air around her “—this _anger_.”

Rea wants to laugh. He’s doing this all wrong. Any idiot knows you can make friends before you crack ribs or you can do it after, but you can’t make friends and crack ribs at the same time. She wants to tell him so. Wants to tell him he can fuck right off.

She hasn’t got the breath.

Another rib cracks under the pressure. Her head is pounding and she isn’t sure how much more she can take. How long she can last.

_There is no emotion, there is peace. Don’t panic. There is peace. You can do this. You have to do this. There is no emotion._

Rea tightens her grip on the stolen lightsaber. She closes her eyes and thinks about the feel of it in her hand, cool and sleek and light as air. She thinks about the crystal inside, blood red and beating a rhythm like a war drum in the back of her mind. She thinks about what the Sith said. _You weren’t made for peace, little Jedi_.

She thinks about Krelv’an. About the foreman and the rainbow flowers on his arms.

She thinks about Rhese.

_Take care of your brother, Turhaya. You’re all he’s got_.

“Pain is just another weapon, girl. Sharpen it. Use it. I know you know how.” The Sith’s smile grows, taunting her as the pressure grows, as the tank bends and warps around her and the escaping steam burns away her skin. “I can taste the darkness on you, little Jedi. It will free you if you just—”

Rea screams.

She screams and something snaps. The Force unwinds within her, surging through her veins and winding around her bones. It hardens her body like durasteel, pushing back against the Sith’s attack. Pushing away the weight pinning her to the tank, letting her fall to the ground.

Rea ignites her stolen saber as her toes hit the floor, dropping into a crouch barely in time to dodge the downswipe of the Sith’s blade. Her ribs burn with every movement and every breath, but she doesn’t slow down. She rolls to her feet, her hands steady on the hilt of her blade as she rises to meet the Sith’s upswing.

The lightsabers hiss and snap against one another. Sister blades, locked in combat.

Rea thinks of Kieres, trapped on the other side of the war.

The Sith strikes at her again, but she meets him with another parry. He strikes again. And again and again and again—strike, parry, strike, parry—until the smile starts to slide from his face. Rea is sweating, struggling to keep up the defense, to fight through her burns and breaks and bruises. She can hear her own voice, telling Krelv’an that the best defense is a good offense.

She never expected to regret blowing off one of her master’s lessons.

“You don’t have to die today, little Jedi,” the Sith says, nearly landing one of his blows. He’s still smiling, but his words are short and there’s no more humor in the yellow of his eyes. He strikes again; Rea parries. “Whatever your people told you about us was a lie. They make up stories to keep you from noticing your cages. You’re a clever little thing. You must have noticed.”

Strike, parry. Strike, parry.

“Becoming Sith won’t make you more cruel.” Strike, parry. “It will just make you more _you_. Don’t you want that?” Strike, parry. Strike, parry. “Being Sith is being free, girl. Let me set you free.”

His next strike slips through her guard.

The blade bites into her shoulder before she twists away. A glancing blow, but even a glancing blow from a lightsaber sears through fabric and flesh and meat. Even a glancing blow can cut all the way to the bone.

_Forward_ , Rea thinks, trying to steady her frantic breath. _Keep moving forward, kid. If you slow down, even for a second, death will catch up. The only way is forward._ It’s Deerin’s voice in her head, pushing her, but she can’t think about that now. Can’t think about anything except—

She remembers another piece of advice he gave her, back when she was learning the _Gizka’s_ guns. _Don’t waste time trying to hit your target in the right spot, kid. The right spot is the one you can hit._

Rea dances backward, just outside the Sith’s next attack, panting. Deerin’s voice ringing in her ears. _The right spot is the one you can hit._

She leaps.

Time seems to slow as she arcs through the air, saber raised overhead for a downward strike. The Sith’s smile twists, confident and amused, as he raises his blade high, ready to parry her telegraphed attack.

He isn’t ready for the other one.

Her own lightsaber, forgotten on the ground, flies into her empty hand. Just as the red blades meet overhead, her saber blazes to life behind him, bathing them both in brilliant blue. And something shifts. With her own saber— _Qarric’s_ saber—back in her hand, something is different. Something inside her, something in the air around them. Something she can’t name or understand just… clicks into place.

The Sith’s eyes blow wide as he realizes what’s happened. As he looks back at the last three seconds, the last ten moves, and sees his mistakes with new clarity. She can feel the sudden spike of his fear. It pierces her chest like ice, cold and sharp and terrible, and Rea can’t find a single grain of pity for him. Can’t think of anything but the foreman and the way his fear felt deep in her belly, heavy and inescapable. Hopeless.

Rea drives her lightsaber between the Sith’s ribs.

She looks directly into his shocked eyes as she holds her blade there, buried to the hilt in his flesh. She savors the feeling of his surprise. The knowing that this is not what he expected when he led a barely grown Jedi into the dark corners of this refinery. That he didn’t realize she’s more than just a “little Jedi”. That he didn’t realize he was tangling with Nirea _fucking_ Velaran.

A cruel smile curls her lips. “Only one way to really be free,” Rea tells him. “I hope it’s everything you dreamed.”

She drives the other saber through his chest.

The Sith collapses to the ground, his spine severed and his punctured lung filling with fluid. He chokes on it, blood pouring from his lips as he gasps for air, his body limp and useless as hers had been, pinned to that tank.

Rea stands over him, watching. Her eyes on his as he lays there, panicked and drowning in his own blood. It’s a quick death, but not a clean one. She watches him struggle for three long minutes before it takes him. Before she feels the little snap in the Force, giving him all the freedom he could ever want.

It doesn’t feel as good as she worried it would, but it feels better than she wanted it to.

_You weren’t made for peace, little Jedi_.

She drops her sabers on the ground and leans back against the wall, every one of her burns and bruises and broken bones rushing back to her all at once. Every minute of sleep she’s lost to Krelv’an’s insane training schedule. Every meal she skipped because she couldn’t bear to take anything from these fringers who have so little.

She’s so tired of this. Tired of the fighting and the tragedy and the life or death calls that always, _always_ end in death. She’s tired of Krelv’an’s unnecessary sacrifices for a war they’ve already lost. Tired of his temper and his lies and his empty fucking promises.

He was supposed to take her to Tython. She read the message in his inbox, the summons from the Council. She’s supposed to be there right now, preparing for her trials. Going to stupid fucking lectures and practicing stupid fucking meditations. She’s supposed to be with Rhese, embarrassing him in front of the other baby Jedi and letting him braid her stupid fucking hair. She’s supposed to be sleeping soundly at night, knowing for sure the only threat to his health and happiness is _boredom_.

Instead she’s here. Out on the Rim, getting her ass kicked and raining death and danger down on civilians just trying to make it through the fucking day.

_This is war, Padawan. People will die._

Rea grits her teeth, reaching for that old familiar anger, wanting to hold on to it, wanting to sharpen it, to _use it_ —But she hasn’t got the energy for rage. She hasn’t got the energy for anything.

That’s the funny thing about internal bleeding. It can be so _draining_.

She laughs at her own joke, toying with the frayed ends of her braid as she slides down to the floor. If she just waits here, will Krelv’an eventually come for her? She can only hope he does. She doesn’t have the strength left to move.

* * *

Krelv’an doesn’t come.

He doesn’t come, but he doesn’t leave either. She’s half-expecting to find their ship gone when she finally staggers her way back to the hangar, but it’s still there, waiting. And Krelv’an is waiting with it.

There’s rage carved into every angle of his body. His expression is an illusion of Jedi calm, relaxed and neutral, but she can see the taut muscle in his neck and the way his knuckles are going white where they grip each other, clasped serenely in front of him. Rea sees straight through his banthashit front to the heart of the thing, to the fury burning just beneath the surface. To all that thin ice that’s cracking fast beneath her feet.

She lifts her chin high and tries to remember what she let it shatter for.

“Padawan,” Krelv’an says.

“Krelv’an,” Rea answers. She sounds more tired than she means to.

“Did your mission bear fruit?”

“Weird fucking way to say it but…” Her fingers brush the cool, sleek metal of the new saber hanging from her belt. “Yeah. I did what I meant to do.”

Something flashes in Krelv’an’s eyes and when he speaks, his tone is thin and sharp as a knife. “Well,” he says. “Thank the stars for that.”

Rea knows her line here. It’s a scene they’ve done a million times before, and she knows how it’s supposed to play out. Knows this is the part where she says something brash and argumentative. Where she insults him and spits on the Order and its rules. Where she picks a fight she can’t win and shouts her justifications until she’s blue in the face.

But this isn’t like before. This is different. Something changed for Rea today and she isn’t the same girl she was the last time. She isn’t even the same girl she was this morning.

And she’s done with fighting wars she’s already lost.

“I’ll get the engines primed,” is all she can think to say. The only words in her brain her master might not take as an opening swing.

_Don’t waste time trying to hit your target in exactly the right spot, kid. The right spot is the one you can hit._

Right now, Krelv’an is as good as untouchable to her. His armor is strong and every part of her is shattered and drained. No matter where she aims, Rea doesn’t have the strength left to pierce his defense. Her bones are broken, her flesh is seared, and her heart and mind have been flayed open and left raw. She’s a walking wound. She’s exhausted.

So she saves her shot.

Rea swallows back her resentment and her pride, reminding herself what this small sacrifice has bought the people on this station, and lets Krelv’an have his win. She bites her tongue and staggers toward the ship in defeated silence, tail tucked between her legs.

She’s got one foot on the boarding ramp when her head is suddenly wrenched backward.

Rea cries out, something in her neck snapping as Krelv’an drags her back to him by the hair, pulling at her braid like rope. He grabs her shoulder with his free hand, fingers digging hard enough to bruise as he jerks her around to face him.

He tugs her hair even harder, yanking her head back so far that for once, she’s the one looking up at him. Her eyes are watering from the pain of it, the pull of her scalp and the twist of her neck, but he doesn’t seem to care. Maybe it’s what he wants. To hurt her.

“Is that all you have to say?” Krelv’an snaps through clenched teeth. All the rage and the fury he can’t show on his face swells up, spilling out in his words and his voice. “You doom thousands to die with no explanation, and you have the nerve to think there’s still a place for you on my ship?”

Stars, but she almost wants to laugh. As if explaining herself would have turned out any differently. As if any of this was ever going to turn out any differently, no matter what she did.

“I told you there was no time. I told you there was a larger plot to unravel. I told you lives were depending on us being able to unravel it. I told you the _war_ was depending on us being able to unravel that. And still—“ Rea can’t hold the whimpers back as Krelv’an wrenches her head back even farther “—still all that mattered was your ego. _Your_ quarry and _your_ hunt and _your_ feelings.

“This is a war, Nirea. People will die. We cannot defend the whole galaxy, so we must focus on the parts which impact the whole. We must think of the bigger picture, not what makes us feel good about ourselves. A Jedi would understand that.”

There’s a tug at her belt. Something lurches in Rea’s belly as she feels something click, as Krelv’an’s hand comes away from her waist with her battered old lightsaber in his fist. _Qarric’s_ lightsaber.

Again Ranna’s voice whispers at the back of her mind. _Everyone will betray you if you give them the chance_. _There’s no one in this galaxy you can trust but family_.

Rea whimpers again, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, and Krelv’an snarls at her in disgust. “You, Nirea Velaran, are no Jedi.”

He releases her as suddenly as he pulled her in. She stumbles away, struggling to stay upright as he turns sharply away, boarding the ship without her and not even bothering to look back at the girl he promised to train. The girl he was supposed to have taken to Tython weeks ago.

Rea’s knees give out as the boarding ramp starts to close. It’s only the rough hands at her elbows that keep her on her feet. Rough hands and forearms etched with rainbow flowers.

The foreman smiles down at her with a sad, watery smile. Rea grimaces back.

“Seeing what it cost,” he starts to say, and hesitates. “I don’t know how to thank you. You didn’t have to help us, but you did it anyway. Even knowing—Did you know he’d—That you’d—“

“Get kicked out of the Order?” Rea shakes her head, regretting it as every muscle burns with pain. “No. I didn’t think he’d go that far.” She swallows. Hears her father’s voice in the back of her mind. _Take care of your brother, Turhaya. You’re all he’s got._ She sucks in a deep breath and lets it out again. “I don’t regret it,” she says. “I’d do it again.”

The foreman’s eyes glisten with tears. She thinks might be they happy kind, but she can’t really tell. She’s not a great judge of anything right now. “Thank you, Master Jedi. From the bottom of my heart.”

Rea smiles as much as she can. “ _Ihn Corellisi nyeve min bhiq suman ehin nyiad_.”

“I’m sorry, we never learned—“ The foreman pauses, shaking his head. “What does that mean?”

“A Corellian never turns her back on someone in need.”

* * *

The foreman brings her back to his apartment and this time when his husband offers her a place at their table, Rea takes it. They still can’t afford the extra mouth, but she can’t afford to say no. Not with the state she’s in.

A hot meal in her belly helps things, but the tender care they give her wounds after dinner helps more. They fuss over her just like Liss used to, not letting her lift a finger for her self. It almost feels nice, having her burns and her cuts cleaned with such tenderness. It almost feels like before.

But she can’t think of before without thinking of Ranna. Without thinking of her father. Without thinking of Rhese.

_Take care of your brother, Turhaya. You’re all he’s got._

Rea shuts her eyes tight and tries not to cry as the foreman unravels her braid. The braid that Ranna used to wear. The braid Rhese used to weave for her. She tries to think of anything but how she’s failed them, how disappointed they would be if they knew what she’d done.

_Take care of your brother, Turha—_

“What’s your favorite color?”

Rea blinks, and when her vision clears she finds the foreman’s daughter sitting next to her, fists full of colored pens. “Um.”

“The Master Jedi is tired, Sweets,” the foreman’s husband says, giving Rea an apologetic smile over his daughter’s head. “I don’t think she wants a tattoo right now.”

“No!” Rea is quick to correct him. “No, I’d love one. If you don’t mind.”

The little girl smiles, showing off a large gap where her two front teeth should have been. “What’s your favorite color?”

She lets the girl choose the palette—Rhese always used to tell her how bad she was at matching—and when she’s done Rea’s arms are covered wrist to elbow in big, bold, blue and red flowers. Rea smiles, compliments her work and tries not to read too much into the colors she chose.

Blue and red. Like the lightsaber she lost and the one still hanging at her hip.

The daughter stays with her, jabbering away as her fathers wrap Rea’s wounds. And when the foreman starts to run a wet comb through her hair, the daughter wants to help. She tells Rea how her hair used to be long and pretty too until a boy at her school poured glue all over it. How her fathers couldn’t get the glue out and she had to let them cut it off.

“I think your hair is pretty just like it is,” Rea tells her.

And she thinks of Ranna. Of the braid she wore every day of her life, of how she sees her aunt’s face every time she looks in the mirror with her hair woven together like that. Of how disappointed Ranna would be in her. Of how Ranna would never have done what she did today. Of how Ranna was strong and cautious and always, _always_ put their family first.

She thinks of Krelv’an too. Of the blood she’s spilled on his orders. Of his fingers wound in the loops of her braid, holding her prisoner. Of how he hurt her. Of how powerless and weak he made her feel.

“Maybe your dads can cut my hair too,” Rea says. “Just like yours.”

They try to beg off, telling her they don’t know how to do it properly, that she won’t like the way it looks. Telling her they have a barber friend who will do it if she can just wait until the morning.

But Rea doesn’t want their barber friend and she doesn’t want to wait and she just bought a future for their family by giving away her own. When she insists, they can’t refuse. All they can do is grab their dull kitchen knife, gather her hair into a ponytail, and grimace as they saw through the strands at the base of her neck.

The cut isn’t a pretty one. It’s choppy and messy and uneven. Longer in the front than the back. Frayed at the edges.

It feels like a weight off her chest. It feels like the foot of hair lying in a pile on the foreman’s floor is a set of chains she didn’t know she was carrying around. It feels like _her_. Like Nirea Velaran. Not a Jedi and not a smuggler. Just a girl without enough sense to stay focused on the bigger picture.

She isn’t sure how, but as she falls asleep on the foreman’s sofa that night, the fabric of it scratching at her bare neck, Rea is sure she’ll figure out another way to get to Rhese. Something outside the Jedi’s way, outside even Ranna’s way. Something new and different that isn’t bathed in blood or indifference. Something that won’t keep her up at night, afraid of who she might be when she wakes up in the morning.

She’ll figure this out the Nirea Velaran way.

_Ihn Corellisi nyeve min bhiq suman ehin nyiad_.


End file.
